


What a King Should Look Like

by angel_deux



Series: we should kind of forget about season 8 [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Daenerys and Jorah and Missandei are all alive just because, F/M, Jon is still banished even though that's sUCH a stupid plotline, Mutual Pining, Post-Relationship, but this is still pretty anti-Dany so don't get too excited, in which I cherry pick the parts of canon I'm sticking with, kind of?, king jaime, the post feast bang is reduced to a post feast fingerbang (i hate myself), they hooked up once and now it's weird, with a very hand-wavey reasoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-10 19:57:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20141131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: Tyrion thinks Bran should be king. Bran decides it should be Jaime. Jaime would rather be dead, but somehow he's talked into it anyway.An AU where Jaime is king, Sansa is his Hand, and Brienne is his Lord Commander.





	1. Let's Get This Over With

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to be kind of confident about this, because I really thought I'm Dying to be Born Again was pure nonsense, but people seemed to like it! So I'm posting this even though I think this is ALSO nonsense! 
> 
> Yet again I've altered the state of the post-feast hookup, and yet again I've made things weird between them, because I wasn't sick of writing pining yet! Hopefully you all aren't sick of reading it!

_The new prince of Dorne has heard many stories about the king of Westeros. Every person his age has likely been hearing them from childhood. The title of King is a new one, but the man beneath the crown has worn so many others. An interesting tale, no matter which of the stories you believe._

_The prince’s advisors back in Dorne had joked that the king was the oldest man from an important house left alive in the seven kingdoms, so that was why he was chosen. The wars have taken the high lords and left behind women and children to rule in their stead. They say the king’s Hand is a child. They say he is guarded by children._

_It is a disappointment when the prince of Dorne arrives and finds that the king is not nearly so old as he has been led to believe. And his Hand is not a child, but a woman grown. Young and beautiful and female, which is surely an odd choice for a Hand, but she is not a child. She stands beside the throne as the prince approaches, and her face is a cool white mask, motionless, like a marble statue._

_At the king’s other side is another woman. She wears the white cloak of the Kingsguard, and she is monstrously tall. She is not much to look upon, and yet the prince cannot look away. He has heard tales of her, too. The first lady knight. He has seen plenty of women warriors in his time, but none who look like her, like they possess the raw fighting strength of any man. He can see now why the king has chosen her. The shock of her alone might scare off the weaker-willed men._

_“Your grace,” the prince says, and he bows. The king rises from his throne. The crown looks well upon his head. He is a very handsome man. Graying, but still golden, like the lion of his house's sigil. He wears the weight of his new office with ease as he walks down the steps to stand before his guest. He smiles a bit, like he and the prince are sharing a joke._

_“Let’s get this over with,” he finally says._

_“Your grace,” the Hand sighs. The Kingsguard woman closes her eyes and shakes her head. The king laughs at both of them._

_“If either of them had seen the way Robert Baratheon greeted guests, they wouldn’t be complaining,” he says mischievously to the prince, like a much younger man. The prince bows low, feeling disarmed by the king’s open laughter, perhaps even more than he is by the sharp edge of the older man’s smile. The Five Year King, they are calling him. A man who has given himself only five years to complete his reign might be more unpredictable than a usual king, and this man’s green eyes dance like wildfire. A bad omen, probably, considering how his sister nearly kept the throne._

* * *

Jaime kisses Brienne after the feast to celebrate the death of the Night King. He’s very tipsy, and he makes some stupid excuse to walk her back to her room when she stands up and wobbles a bit on her feet. Says something inane about how he has to escort her to protect what remains of the integrity of the castle – if she topples over, the whole thing might finally come down. She’s also had enough to drink to take the jest in the spirit it was intended, and she laughs this horrifically loud, glorious, beautiful laugh, and so he gets her out into the hall where no one can see them, and then he kisses her. He kisses her again when they reach the top of a flight of stairs, and then again when they reach her room, and he’s desperate to kiss her in the two seconds it takes for her to open the door and let him in. He’s been desperate before. For her and for Cersei both. This feeling inside him like he’ll die if he doesn’t have them. They fought the dead. They fought the fucking _dead_, and they’re alive, and he has wanted Brienne’s hands on him for so long.

She is clumsy with want and drink the same way he is, and he knows somewhere, in the back of his mind where rational thought still exists, that he cannot fuck her tonight. This isn’t what she deserves, and it isn’t what their story deserves either. If _he’d_ been listening to their story, and years of longing culminated in a drunken fuck, he’d be disgusted by the wasted opportunity.

Still, he’s not going to do _nothing_.

Brienne is gloriously confused by and unprepared for everything. When he touches her hair. When he kisses her neck. When he struggles to unlace her shirt. Every time he touches her somewhere new, she looks at him with this endearing incredulousness, and he can hear her thinking _really? This too? But already so much has happened_. Jaime has never really understood the value of firsts. He and Cersei were together for so long. He was her first everything, as she was his, but he loved the comfort and familiarity of the years that followed so much more than those anxious, fumbling beginnings. But he keeps thinking of Brienne, and how no one has ever done this for her, and he’s aching with need and pride and a desire to show her how good it all can be.

_Don’t__ fuck her. Don’t fuck this up._ A constant litany in his head, and he brings her off twice with his hands and mouth before he even lets her touch him, and her strong grip and guileless expression make him _glad_ he didn’t fuck her, because he never would have lasted.

Afterwards, they lay tangled together, and there are miles of skin to explore, but he keeps finding his hand and mouth on the scars on her shoulder from the bear. There are newer scars. Some so new they’re still bleeding. Bruises aplenty from their fight against the dead. But the bear scars are his, and he likes the feel of them under the pads of his fingers.

In the morning, Brienne is gone, and he searches the castle, pretending _not_ to be searching, until Sansa Stark very innocently tells him that Brienne joined a party riding out to assess the damage around the walls of Winterfell. Jaime spends most of the rest of the morning sulking until he’s finally pulled into a war council he wants no part of.

And then Tyrion is talking about Cersei and Kings Landing, and Daenerys is talking about fire and blood, and Jaime feels this sinking horror. Reality settling back on him like a heavy blanket. Reality and _duty._ Always duty.

* * *

Brienne asks him to stay, when it’s time. She stands in the courtyard in her armor, with Oathkeeper at her hip, and Jaime wishes that he could. He hasn’t kissed her since the night of the feast, because she could barely meet his eye even _before_ he said he would be going with the northern forces to Kings Landing, and it has been impossible to even glimpse her since.

“I can’t stay,” he says. “If I did, I would always wonder if I could have made a difference. I don’t know if Cersei will listen to me. I think it’s too late. But I’m the only one who might be able to get through to her. Between the two of them, they’ll burn the city to ash. I have to try.”

Brienne nods, like she knew that was going to be his answer all along. He steps closer to her, but her expression is warning. He remembers the soft surprise on her face after the first time he made her peak. That shock of want and sated breathlessness. The way she breathed out his name in a voice that shook, like he had given her a gift more precious than the Valyrian steel that was easily his best move. Now she is shuttered tight, literally armored to see him off, and he wonders if it’s less damning because she’s armored in the gift he gave her. He thinks a different set of armor would have sent a message, but he’s not sure that this one does.

“I wish I could stay,” he tries, softly, and Brienne gives him a sad half smile in return, but she doesn’t say anything. If she did, he imagines it would be something like “you could. You just don’t want to”. Which wouldn’t be right or fair, he doesn’t think, because every bit of _want _is focused on her, and it’s duty that pulls him away, but he doesn’t know how to correct her. He can’t kiss her here, and she hasn’t been alone with him since that night. He reaches for her hand, and she gives it, and then he bends and kisses it. “Ser,” he says, and she gives him a nod, gentle and a little reproachful, and he leaves her.

* * *

Jaime’s first order as king is to try to retire as king, but Tyrion and Sansa and Brienne all roll their eyes so damningly that Jaime feels obliged to agree to put the crown on his unworthy head. Arya Stark is the only one who thinks it’s funny. That blacksmith boy she’s with, too, though he’s better at hiding it behind a ducked head and red cheeks while Arya laughs loudly.

“This is absurd,” Jaime argues, trying not to think of the kings and queen before him. His sons and their mother. Now his little brother is wearing manacles around his wrists. Jon Snow, who killed the last dragon and saved what remained of Kings Landing after his chosen queen tried to burn it, is locked in a cell to await the king’s justice. _Jaime’s_ justice. Daenerys Targaryen is recovering under guard with what remains of her retinue. Varys has disappeared. Samwell Tarly is serving as their grand maester despite not being qualified. And fucking Bronn is just sort of hanging out, laughing every time Jaime tries to act remotely kingly. It’s an absurd nightmare that _he_, of all people, is supposed to be in charge of all of this, but they keep asking him to make decisions.

“Why me?” he asks Bran Stark when they’re alone. Tyrion had attempted to name the Stark boy king, but Bran had turned it down and named Jaime as his choice. Jaime hadn’t even been at that particular meeting: he was busy standing vigil as best he could for his dead sister, her body interred beneath the ruins of the Red Keep, somewhere in the rubble. Brienne was the one who found him and brought him to the somehow-still-standing Iron Throne, where they all waited with a crown and too few smiles on their faces. He kept waiting for someone to reveal it as a joke, but no one did, and Bran had insisted, and now he’s king of the fucking seven kingdoms.

“Why _not_ you?” Bran asks. Jaime wonders if he’s allowed to order Bran to never speak to him again.

“I’m going to be a terrible king,” he argues. “All my life I’ve been trying to avoid responsibility, and I’ve done fairly well for myself so far. Only slipped up a few times.”

“You’ll be a fine king,” Bran says mildly. “That’s why I chose you.”

“You and more than half the council, apparently. How’d you get them to agree to that?”

“Tyrion made me sound very impressive, I suppose. So when I chose, they listened.”

“A Lannister still on the throne. _Her_ brother.”

“You helped Jon save the city. You almost negotiated a surrender. Everyone saw you _try_. That means something. They are calling you Goldenhand in the streets. They are cheering your name.”

“I barely did anything,” Jaime argues. “And none of it mattered! Half the city burned!”

“It would have been worse, if you did not convince Jon to make the same choice that you once did,” Bran says. “The people heard you, and they saw you, and they know why you killed Aerys, and they know that your words to Jon meant that Jon chose to save them instead of letting his queen burn them all. They know you are not your sister. They sing songs of you in taverns, and of your heroic deeds. Even your Kingslaying has been deemed heroic, now that they understand the madness that nearly burned them.”

Jaime feels a certain flutter at that. The knowledge that at least _some_ people will hate him less because they finally understand why he did what he did.

“Oh,” he manages to say.

“You are a good choice,” Bran continues. “You will be a good king, if you will it.”

* * *

Jaime doesn't like being king. He can’t understand why people kill each other and die for _this_. He can’t understand why Cersei drove herself halfway to madness and Daenerys drove herself a bit further for an awful fucking throne, ass-numbing boredom, and the unique secondhand embarrassment that comes from watching noblemen tacitly compete to see who can lick the floor at your feet the best. It’s miserable and boring and thankless. He can tell within the first week that he’s going to hate every second of it.

He supposes he owes some debt of gratitude to Daenerys and Jon and Tyrion for making such a royal fucking blunder of their attempted conquest, because at least there’s a lot of rebuilding to get done. There’s no time to allow himself to get fat and lazy, turning soft like Robert had so quickly after being crowned. A younger man might find a way to demand luxury even while the city starved, and a more monstrous man might even delight in it, but Jaime’s getting old and he’s not nearly monstrous enough to follow in his son's footsteps, so he devotes himself entirely to improvements. Sometimes at night he’s so tired he just falls asleep at his desk. Cersei, wherever she is, must be furious with him.

_Everything would have been different if you had just listened to me and became Hand of the King after Jon Arryn died_, she would say, if she were here, disgusted and annoyed and frustrated by his inability to do the sensible thing until he’s already fucked up every other option. But he was a different man when Jon Arryn died. He probably wouldn’t have fallen asleep at his desk, then. He would have half-heartedly done a few things a day and then let the small council decide what they wanted while he continued to fuck the king’s wife, his_ twin_ _sister_, in private. No, Bran Stark's all-knowing shell would never have chosen that man to be even a king's Hand, let alone a king.

He worries about it, which he thinks is probably a good sign. If he’s worried about succumbing to the lure of power the way his family seems predisposed to, maybe it means he will be less likely to actually give in.

* * *

He never feels older than when judging the people so much younger than him who have been awaiting their trials in their cells while he tried to figure out appropriate punishments. He understands some of them more than he wishes he did, and so he is merciful, when he can be. He knows the people will want justice done, and so he _tries_. He tries to make it justice without allowing it to become vengeance.

Jon is banished to the north, assigned with the thankless task of helping to repair the damage done to the Free Folk settlements and the wall, until such a time as Jaime decrees him welcome. He would pardon the boy immediately if he could, but he cannot deny that Jon helped bring Daenerys to the seven kingdoms, and he continued to support her for far too long, and the people of Kings Landing need _some_ punishment, even if Jon eventually saved them.

Tyrion and Jorah Mormont are similarly judged, and they are banished as well, but in the opposite direction. Banishing his brother is the second-hardest thing he’s ever had to do, right after turning away from Cersei when she rejected peace terms and declared that the city would burn, knowing that she would die if he left her. But Tyrion nods at him when Jaime steels himself to deliver the sentence, and afterward he makes some jokes about the whorehouses across the Narrow Sea, and Jaime knows Tyrion will come back gladly if Jaime asks, but he might actually _enjoy_ the time away from Kings Landing to recover and atone for the guilt he obviously feels.

Everyone around him cries out for the execution of the dragon queen and her remaining army, but there are no more dragons, and she's just a girl without them. Beautiful, shattered, lost. It feels unjust to let her live when she committed the horrors that he killed her father for only planning, but he will not start his reign with the death of another Targaryen, so he sends her with his brother and Mormont, banished across the sea, her army dead or scattered back to their homelands. He tells her that he hopes she finds some peace, but her expression is hollow, and she does not respond as Missendei and Grey Worm lead her from the throne room, thanking him in the silence that their queen leaves behind.

His own sentence, he decides, will be five years.

“Five years of what, your grace?” Sansa asks when he announces it to the gathered nobles. There aren’t many to hear the decree: a very resentful Edmure Tully, Sansa and Arya and Bran Stark, Robert Arryn, a steely Yara Greyjoy, a bewildered Samwell Tarly, Gendry Baratheon – who looks about as terrified as Jaime is to suddenly be in a position of responsibility – and a very bored-looking Davos Seaworth. It’s funny that none of them but Bran seem to think he’s good for anything, and Bran’s the one he chucked out a bloody window. Bran nods and smiles slightly, like he knows already what Jaime’s going to say. Maybe he does. Jaime’s still not entirely sure _what _Bran is or what his powers are, but he finds comfort in the approval he sees on the boy’s face.

“Five years of this,” Jaime replies, his hand on the armrest of the Iron Throne. “And then I will turn the whole thing to slag, and there will be a ruling council in my place.” He looks at Sam, who was the one who gave him the idea, and Sam looks thrilled. The rest of the room murmurs with discontent, and Jaime only smiles. He is suddenly quite sure that he won’t survive five years. If Daenerys doesn’t find a way to take revenge, one of these nobles will find a way to get rid of him so they can take the throne for themselves and prevent the ending of the cycle of power that they’re all so fond of.

* * *

It is that certainty that someone will stop him that makes him so passionate, he finds. He hears the things people say about him, because Bronn never lets him forget. They say he’s reckless, that he’s driven, that a five year sentence makes him feel desperate to do something worthy of having his name in history books. Which is absurd in itself, because he’s a Kingslayer who became a king. He lost a hand and fought the dead. The War of the Five Kings debatably started because he fucked his twin sister. He was the first man in the history of Westeros to knight a woman. Every history book for the rest of time is going to include at least a bit about him, even if most of it will make him seem horrible. 

* * *

He chooses the council that will eventually replace him as wisely as he can, though he isn’t given much choice. Most of the major houses are all but wiped out, and the smaller houses send people greedy for power who Jaime decides to turn away because their ambition reminds him too much of the people who used to fawn over Cersei so that they could get closer to true power. He doesn’t trust them with his kingdom. He chooses some representatives from among the smallfolk, which is difficult because the people who _want_ to be on it are usually hoping to be rewarded with gold and recognition, and that’s not his goal.

The lords all clamor for him to choose a Hand, after he has ruled for nearly a moon without one, and he knows a good Hand could help him with this fucking mess, and so he goes over his options. He wishes Tyrion hadn’t backed the wrong horse. He doesn’t think he would have liked to have his little brother making so many decisions for the kingdom after having such a terrible track record of late, but Tyrion would have at least had some advice. All of his options seem too weak or too strong-willed or too idiotic. Too much or too little of every quality.

It takes him a single day to realize that his major problem is that he’s still trying to think like his father would, and like Tyrion would, and like even Cersei would. Narrowing his pool of options according to what they would suggest. Once he stops doing that, once he can see things more clearly, the choice is obvious.

* * *

She has lingered in Kings Landing for Bran, who kept insisting that it wasn’t time to leave yet, and Jaime supposes that this is probably why. Bran has become more like himself and less like the irritating drone he was back in Winterfell, but he still enjoys being mysterious about certain things.

“Is this about Bran?” she asks.

They’re standing together at a low balcony near the sea, because Jaime didn’t want to have this conversation in the Red Keep, especially not the throne room. It’s all still being rebuilt, and it’s very noisy and dusty and filled with workers, and it makes Jaime itch to know that Cersei’s body is still down there somewhere along with whoever else was trying to escape through the crypts. Besides, no one has found Varys yet, and Jaime has had repeated nightmares of the man slipping out from behind a wall while Jaime is sleeping. He doesn’t want to risk being overheard.

“Bran hasn’t said anything,” he says. He’s nervous, he realizes. Sansa frowns at him.

“Is it about Brienne?” she asks. Jaime swallows thickly and refuses to look at her.

“No,” he says. He tries not to sound _too _pathetically sad. “This isn’t about Brienne.”

“Then why did you ask me to come alone?”

Brienne hasn’t managed to properly look him in the eye since he was crowned. She calls him _your grace_ in a stiff, stuffy voice that makes him grind his teeth together. She trails Sansa like a wan shadow with no personality of her own, like she thinks the crown has robbed him of the memory of the way she’d gripped his hair and pulled at it when his tongue was on her.

In truth, Jaime asked Sansa to come alone because he cannot bear the new, distant Brienne who has refused his every attempt to speak with her like the equals they should always be.

“I asked you to come alone because I didn’t feel like being humiliated in front of an audience if you reject me,” he says, instead of telling her the truth. Sansa blanches and takes half a step back, and Jaime rushes to fix it. “_Gods_ no, Sansa. I want you to be my _Hand_, not my wife.”

Sansa blinks, and frowns, and blinks again, and then she asks, “really?” in a small voice that reminds him how young she is. Small and hopeful and quiet, a smile threatening to crack open her smooth northern mask.

“You may have noticed I’m short one,” he says, and her small smile turns into a pained expression, and she leans against the balcony and frowns at him with disapproval.

“Was that a _joke_?” she asks, and he laughs at the way her irritated gaze lingers on his golden hand.

“A bit,” he admits. “But the request wasn’t. I can think of no one better suited to the task.” He realizes that it sounds like he has chosen her because of a dearth of options, and he hastens to add, “I know you don’t like me. You probably don’t trust me. But you care about the future of the realm as deeply as I do. You kept Winterfell running when your cousin was off losing his good sense. You survived some of the worst schemers of Westeros, including my sister. You know how Kings Landing and its people work, and you don’t like it any more than I do, but you’re too smart to be openly disdainful the way I tend to be. A good Hand is a balance of the king, and you would be that in every way. Five years. That’s all I’m asking. If you wish to leave my service at any time, I will grant the north its independence and name you its queen. If you somehow find it in you to endure me for the whole five years, my last act will be to name you Queen of the North and send you on your way. I need the guidance of someone older and wiser than me, my lords say, but they are all old and dull, so I figure young and wise is probably better.”

Sansa is looking at him still. Half incredulous and half convinced that he’s joking.

“I thought you’d ask Bran, or perhaps...I don’t know. Brienne.”

“Brienne would not be a very good Hand, I’m afraid,” Jaime says, grinning at the thought. “She’s too noble. You understand the way things work, and you understand nobility isn’t always possible. You are the best parts of your father, but none of the things about him that I found so irritating, so I think we would work well together. And you aren’t afraid to call me a horrible idiot when I’m being a horrible idiot. I like that about you. Cersei surrounded herself with sycophants, and she would have had all of us burned for standing against her. Daenerys did the same. I want someone by my side who will challenge me.”

“Brienne would challenge you,” Sansa says quietly.

“Brienne can’t even look at me,” Jaime replies. He tries to sound airy and not bitter and depressed, but he probably doesn’t manage it. “And if she ever feels the need to challenge me, it will be with about a thousand _your grace_s, because she’s so very _proper_ now.”

So much for not sounding bitter. Sansa looks at him with her eyebrows raised when he’s done, and it feels vaguely scolding. Like her mother when they were still children at Riverrun and Jaime was spending too much time begging the Blackfish for stories and ignoring Lysa Tully entirely.

“If I stay and serve as your Hand, Brienne will stay as well,” Sansa finally says. “Does that have anything to do with your decision to name me?”

“No,” Jaime answers, and he hopes she can tell that he’s answering honestly, as unbelievable as it might seem. The truth is that he resigned himself to a life without Brienne a long time ago, and no matter what he might _want_, he knows that he shattered something between them when he left. If this was all about Brienne, he would likely choose to send she and Sansa back to the north where he could imagine his lady knight safely walking the halls where he kissed her and sleeping every night in the bed where he tasted her. “Brienne makes her own choices. I imagine she will choose to stay here and guard you, and I have no issue with that, but I wouldn’t see the point in forcing her to remain near me if she’s going to continue to avoid me.”

“If I am to be your Hand, will Brienne be named Lord Commander?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“What if I made it a condition to my acceptance?”

Stubborn and prideful, annoyed with him, because she thinks he’s undervaluing Brienne. Why does everyone insist on misunderstanding him?

“You think I would deny her the white cloak for my own sake? There is no one I would trust more to watch my back. It’s _her _I’m trying to protect. The Kingsguard was a poison to me. Choking me under rules and vows that I could not uphold. Brienne has found a good service in guarding you. Swearing to a lord or lady she can be proud to protect is all she’s ever wanted. I wouldn’t make her guard the likes of me. Not with those _vows_ hanging over her.”

“You can change the vows,” Sansa reminds him. “Write them yourself. Make sure they’re vows that you would be glad to swear.” When he looks at her with surprise, she shrugs. “You’re the king, your grace. You can do whatever you want.”

“If you call me _your grace_ in private ever again, I’m packing you off back home and naming Bronn as my Hand,” Jaime grumbles, which makes her smile. “But…you’re right, Sansa. Thank you. You’re already a better Hand than I deserve.”

“Oh, have I accepted the job?” Sansa asks dryly.

“Haven’t you?” Jaime asks in return.

* * *

Sansa helps him rewrite the rules of the Kingsguard so that they will make sense even when they are guarding the Council once the five years are done. She does him the courtesy of not smirking at him when he tries to very casually suggest taking out the whole “no marriage” thing, though he can feel her rolling her eyes behind his back. He also does not want to require his Kingsguard to serve for life, both because he doesn’t want to bind them and because he wants to be able to get rid of the ones who can be corrupted. He and Sansa haggle over terms – how many council votes are needed to dismiss a Kingsguard? Should they be released upon marriage or still allowed to serve? How many council votes should be required to _confirm_ a Kingsguard? Jaime wants to tear out his beard by the end of it, but Sansa is patient in the way a person can only be when they’ve spent the last year calculating fucking grain stores.

At the end of it, Sansa is pleased, and she takes their scribbled page and begins to copy it over into something neater and with fewer curse words.

“This is a fair set of vows,” she says. “Maybe they’ll start calling you King Jaime the Just.”

“Shut up,” Jaime says. He plonks his crown on Sansa’s head on his way out the door, ignoring her sputter of indignation.

* * *

Sansa wants to surprise Brienne with the appointment in front of everyone, but the thought of Brienne rejecting it makes him a bit queasy, and he isn’t sure she’d feel comfortable rejecting it if she _wanted_ to in front of all those eyes, so he sends for her to meet him in his private solar. This horrible, gaudy room that survived the flames and still smells faintly of Cersei, like a ghost from an old tale. It makes him wish for a dragon. Just a small one. Just to burn this room apart so he could start anew.

Brienne is uncomfortable in the doorway, all proper and stiff the way she has been, lately. Jaime is spinning his crown around on his stump when she enters, and she looks pained, like she wants to call him an idiot but doesn’t dare, and it makes him annoyed all over again.

_Call me an idiot_, he longs to say. _Call me anything but ‘your grace’ in that horrible hollow voice like we’ve never met_.

“There you are,” he says, standing up so he can bow to her. His crown falls to the ground and clatters loudly, and she barely manages to stifle a sigh. She bows in return and stares resolutely at his right ear.

“You summoned me,” she says. He sighs, and he sits back down in his chair, slumping insolently, picking up the crown with the toe of his boot, because at this point he’s _trying _to piss her off.

“I _did_ summon you,” he says, trying to recapture some of the irritating smarm he had back when he was her prisoner and she looked at him with frank disgust and not this careful, loathsome neutrality that is all he’s seen from her lately. “It seemed to be the easiest way to get you to actually talk to me. I didn’t want to abuse the privilege if the sight of me so disturbs you that you can’t even meet my eyes anymore, but it seemed kinder to speak to you privately than drop this on you in the middle of court.” He waits for her to say something. Deny the accusation of avoidance. Snipe at him about his presumptions. Correct his posture, even. But she just presses her thick lips together and continues to stare at his ear, like he would mistake it for eye contact. He sighs. “Your dear Lady Stark and I have agreed that you would be the best choice for Lord Commander of my Kingsguard.”

“Your…what?” Brienne asks, her voice very faint. Finally she meets his eyes, incomprehension flooding them like it had when he pulled off her smallclothes and raced to put his fingers on her. Now Jaime is the one who has to look away, but looking at his hand certainly doesn’t help.

“I wanted to avoid the whole issue for as long as possible. You remember how I felt about my old Kingsguard vows, I assume. I couldn’t imagine making people swear to the same things I violated repeatedly. But Sansa persuaded me to rewrite them into ones I can be proud of. You wouldn’t be required to serve me for life. You could leave my service whenever you wished. And if I was going to do something that would put the entirety of Kings Landing at risk, you would be within your rights to question me, or slit my throat if it came to that.”

He meets her eyes again, and she swallows heavily and clutches Oathkeeper more tightly in her grasp.

“I would…it would be an honor, your grace,” she starts, and he sighs again. He wants to stand up and go to her, but he forces himself to remain seated.

“I know they say the crown changes a man, but I barely ever wear it, and I’ve been king for less than a moon’s turn.”

“Your grace?” Brienne asks, plainly bewildered.

“Have you so soon forgotten that you dragged me through the Riverlands on a leash? That you cleaned me of sick when I was dying? That we shared a bath together at Harrenhall? Because I haven’t forgotten, Brienne, and I haven’t forgotten Winterfell.”

She sucks in a sharp gasp at that, and she looks away from him, color returning to her cheeks. He feels guilty. He wishes he did not.

“Ser Jaime,” she starts, but she doesn’t finish.

“I suppose that’s better,” he grumbles. “Though not by much. Brienne, I…if you cannot treat me as you used to, tell me now so I can prepare. You of all people know what a fool I can be, and I believe I need you to point it out. Keep me feeling like myself. The only one who treats me as he ought is _Bronn_. I don’t want your graces and I don’t want your _Sers_. I was only Jaime to you once. Maybe I flatter myself to think I was your _friend_.”

Brienne’s eyes are piercing now, and he cannot look away. She seems uncomfortable, but she moves away from the doorway, and she finally sits in the seat across from him.

“Jaime,” she says, and he smiles. “You know it isn’t…proper, now. You’re the _king_.”

“If there’s one good thing I can claim from having this stupid crown thrust upon me, it’s that _I’m_ the one who decides what’s proper now. Aerys and Robert and Joffrey never tired of reminding people that they were king, and I suspect I shall never tire of reminding people that I’m Jaime Lannister, the fucking Kingslayer, a one-handed knight who once would have been content to die beneath the walls of Winterfell as long as Brienne of Tarth was alive and in his sight when he did.”

She shakes her head like his voice is an irritating buzzing sound, and she looks down at her feet.

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” she says miserably.

“Why? Because people say I shouldn’t? Or because you don’t want me to?”

The silence that stretches is abysmal.

Jaime knows what she will say, and he feels like he might be sick.

“Because I don’t want you to,” she finally answers, and he looks down at his lap before she can meet his eyes. His fingers wrap more tightly around the crown.

So that’s it, then. He was right when he thought that he shattered something when he left. Brienne gave him a chance that night at Winterfell. A single chance to prove to her that he was the man she believed he was, and he proved to _not_ be that man. He wasn’t able to save Cersei, but he _tried_, and Brienne cannot forgive that. He understands. He wishes he didn’t, but he knew the risk when he left, and he judged that the possibility of saving his sister and their child was one he couldn’t squander.

Except Cersei sneered at him when he tried to persuade her to surrender, and she died fleeing Daenerys, and the child was dead long before, and now Jaime is the fucking _king_, a thing he never wanted, and the only thing he _does_ want has slipped from his grasp because he’s an idiot who let it go.

“All right,” he says. His voice is a faint, wispy thing, very far away. “I will try to be as proper as you wish, then, Ser.” Brienne flinches a little, and he has to push down annoyance to see it. Maybe not _so _formal, then. He wishes she would tell him what she _does _want from him, if she doesn’t want his devotion. “I would still name you as Lord Commander, if you would accept. If it makes you feel better to put the Ser in front of my name, fine, but I can’t bear ‘your grace’, and I would ask you not to. I hope you will still be a friend to me, even if you find it difficult to separate _me_ from this bloody crown.”

Brienne stares at him. She looks as if she is weighing her options, so he lets her. Finally, she nods.

“Of course, Jaime,” she says. He’s fairly certain that he’s just had his heart broken. Maybe it’ll feel stomped on, once the shock wears off. Maybe he’ll lie awake tonight and remember the resolute way she’d said _because I don’t want you to_. But at least now he knows, and at least now he’s sure that she’ll stop avoiding him, now that both their wants have been expressed and his have been shot down. So he smiles at her, and he nods to dismiss her, and he tries to convince himself that he feels a little bit better.

* * *

“There’s obviously no precedent for a Lord Commander becoming a queen,” Sansa says as she sweeps into his chambers later that evening. “But Sam and I were talking it over, and the vows we wrote don’t...”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jaime says. He says it, he knows, quite dramatically. He cannot help himself. He is standing at the window in his quarters, like he had so often seen Cersei do, so he _feels_ dramatic. His arms crossed over his chest. Gazing down at the half-ruined city below. The shock _has _worn off, and he _does _feel quite heartbroken, but mostly he just feels old and tired and one-handed. Everything is so bloody _difficult _when you’re old and tired and one-handed. Why does anyone want to be king of anything?

“Why would she turn down the position?” Sansa asks incredulously. “I’ll talk to her. I…”

“She isn’t going to be my queen,” Jaime says patiently. He is, he’ll admit, slightly gratified that Sansa assumed Brienne would turn down the Kingsguard before turning down _him_.

“What do you mean? Did you ask her?”

“I didn’t bother. She has no interest in…”

“Well _that’s_ ridiculous,” Sansa interrupts.

“As flattering as your confidence is…”

“Shut up. You know I’m not speaking for myself.”

“No, I certainly am aware of that,” Jaime says, laughing at last and turning to face her, thinking of her horrified expression when she thought he was asking for her hand.

“I only say it because I’m sure Brienne wouldn’t refuse.”

“If I threw around my power as king? Or even just _reminded _her that I’m the king? No, likely not. And then we’d both be fucking miserable.”

“You can’t really believe that, can you?”

“Sansa, it’s done,” Jaime sighs. “She’ll take the position of Lord Commander.”

“You’re giving up?”

“She asked me to,” Jaime says quietly, and Sansa’s expression goes all irritated and sad, all at once, and she shakes her head.

“I know how she feels about you,” she says.

“You knew how she _felt _about me,” he points out. “I don’t think it should be too shocking that I managed to destroy those feelings. I have a unique talent for making people hate me.”

“She doesn’t _hate _you.”

“I might prefer it if she did.”

“I never realized how dramatic you are. You’re worse than I was as a girl.”

“Well, we’re friends now. I can be dramatic to you, and you’re my Hand, so you have to listen.”

“Oh, are we friends?”

“I don’t know what else you’d call this.”

Sansa considers, and he can tell that she’s racking up a list of probably very funny and also very mean things to say, but then she lays the papers she’s holding down on his desk and says, “I suppose we’re friends. It’s odd, though.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re so _old_,” she says, and Jaime laughs and groans and sits down.

“Fine. You have my attention. What is it you want?”

“Five years. You said five years. Is that still the plan?”

“It is.”

“And what happens then?”

“A representative council to make sure the voices of the common folk are counted. Sam has some ideas. We’ll work with him to flesh it out. It’s only been a few moons. There’s time.”

“I meant for _you_, Jaime. What comes next for you?”

“Oh. I don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought.”

Sansa sighs and looks at him in a way that’s oddly motherly, for a girl who’s young enough to be his daughter. “Why not?” she asks.

“Because it’s too depressing,” Jaime admits. “Maybe I’ll track down Tyrion, see what he’s up to. There isn’t much left for me here.”

“There’s Winterfell,” Sansa says, slightly reluctant, but seeming sincere enough. He appreciates that more than he can say, but he can’t quite imagine it. Lurking around the halls of Winterfell like some useless, pathetic ghost. At least if he goes to Casterly Rock, he’ll be haunting his own family castle. The last Lannister. The last king, moulding away in that grim place. Yes, that seems appropriate.

“Thank you, Sansa,” he says instead, mostly because he doesn’t want her to call him dramatic again.

* * *

Brienne is made Lord Commander in a fitting ceremony. Jaime still hates to think of that one perfect night in Winterfell, but he’s pleased to give her this dream. Knighting her was the best thing he’s ever done, and this seems like a good follow-up. He puts the white cloak around her shoulders with Sansa’s help, and then Brienne swears her new vows, and the rest of the court fades away as he watches her.

She smiles up at him afterward, and he smiles back, and there is no bitterness in his heart. Only longing. Only sadness and regret. Only pride to see her having come so far.

_I love you_, he thinks. Baldly stated for the first time, even if it’s only in his head. But he does not say it aloud. And he will not say it aloud, because she asked him not to. That doesn’t make it any less true.


	2. I Don't Know if I had it in me to Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, i should have split this into three chapters, but I already said it would be two chapters and I already edited all 11k words of this monster, so....here you go. 
> 
> This chapter is lowkey brought to you by my rewatch of Season 5 and me remembering how attractive I think Daario is.

Brienne is a very irritating Lord Commander, as Jaime had assumed she would be. She’s suspicious and prickly to everyone who comes to court, and she always insists on guarding the king herself during important functions, which often sends Jaime into a spiral of anxiety; if someone _did_ decide to send an assassin, she would do some fool thing like throw herself in front of him to try and stop it.

He tries to suggest that she take a more administrative approach to Lord Commanding exactly once. He does not _dare _to suggest it again.

She picks the rest of the Kingsguard herself, with the help of Sansa and Bronn, because Jaime assigns them the task when he realizes he doesn’t know enough about the applicants to make an informed decision. Podrick is the only one he chooses for himself, and it makes Brienne glow with pride when he suggests it, and the lad actually _cries _when Jaime offers the position. The others that Brienne chooses are a mixed bag of former sellswords, former soldiers, and former Goldcloaks. There are some minor knights, some northmen, a second son from a minor house in the Westerlands. One is Dornish, and there’s a fierce Free Folk woman who Jaime quite likes because she hates the puffed up lords as much as he does.

Brienne is a fair Lord Commander, by all accounts. The people of Kings Landing seem to love her, and little girls cheer for her in the streets when she walks by, and Brienne always has to hide a smile when Jaime teases her about being the next Barristan the Bold. And the more he teases her, the more normal she acts, until finally she’s snapping at him regularly. Dryly telling him off in front of the smallcouncil. Rolling her eyes openly at him. Calling him a child and a fool and an utter moron as he _basks _in the fact that she sometimes even seems to forget that he’s the king.

By the time the first year of his reign has passed, he begins to fear assassination a little less – at least from the lords of Westeros. The whole Five Year King idea still isn’t very popular with the nobility, but he has proven to be at least not the worst ruler they’ve had in recent memory. The realm is consumed with rebuilding, and he helps, and they aren’t used to having a ruler who considers their needs when making decisions. Bran oversees the north while Sansa is serving as Hand, and they win back the northern smallfolk slowly with food traded from Dorne and from further afield. He fills abandoned castles with lords and ladies he raises up from the people who have proven most selflessly helpful to the people around them. It’s basically a parody of _goodness_, and it makes him laugh to think that he has a hope of fooling anyone into thinking he’s earnest about it, but Sansa assures him that it’s what the people need, and he believes her.

The Lannisters used to be all about making grand, opulent gestures to distract the smallfolk from their starvation, but the crown can’t afford for Jaime to make those kinds of gestures, and he knows he needs to be as far from Lannister as possible, so Sansa has people spreading word and education and reminders of how his improvements are going to help in the long run. He’s not sure the common folk wouldn’t rather have gold in the hand _now_, but there are no enormous riots in his first year, and only a minor one near the beginning of the second, so he takes it as a win.

The people who serve him – Bronn and Davos and Sansa in particular – all report various whispers about Daenerys Targaryen and her plans for revenge. She’s back in Meereen and ruling there, slowly gathering strength and wealth, and it’s not nearly enough to threaten Westeros, but he knows he’ll have to make peace with her eventually. Only Davos doesn’t bother him by reminding him that he should have ordered her execution. Brienne doesn’t say anything about it at all, but she frowns a lot and watches him more carefully in the weeks following each of those whispers, and they irritate everyone with their bickering as he pretends not to understand why she’s being so annoying and she pretends that she’s not being annoying at all.

* * *

“Daario Naharis was spotted in Braavos,” Sansa says coolly one morning, entering Jaime’s quarters as he’s gamely struggling through some shipping reports at his desk. With Davos being the poor writer he is, and Jaime being the poor reader, these reports are always very blind-leading-the-blind, and they always give him a headache. He tosses them aside, glad to be distracted, even if it’s to talk about his imminent assassination.

“Can you think of any reason for the dragon queen's consort to be in Braavos?” Jaime asks wryly. Sansa sighs and looks over his shoulder to exchange a glance with Brienne. As always, the woman he loves is somewhere behind him, out of sight, making his shoulders tense and his headaches worse. She may have gotten less cool and distant and more friendly, but there is still a detachment like there was back at the beginning, and he still desperately aches to kiss her again, and it still hurts if he is given enough quiet moments in a row to think about it.

Sansa breaks her eye contact with Brienne and leans against the edge of his desk, putting her hand on his golden one. She only ever touches the hand that isn’t his, and he pretends not to notice it, because he knows she thinks she keeps her fear of touch hidden.

“Jaime,” she says. “I’ve written Arya to see what she can find out, and I asked Bran to do the same, but I would ask that you trust me. She’s going to send someone for you.”

“Yes, I imagine so,” Jaime admits quietly.

“We’ll double our guards,” Brienne says.

“Arya will return to give her counsel, and I can try to find out how much Daenerys is willing to pay them. If we…”

“We have to consider what will happen if they succeed,” Jaime says. Sansa and Brienne both go quiet, and again Sansa glances at Brienne. He hears his Lord Commander moving closer, and he sighs and rummages through the disorganized papers on his desk until he finds the one he scribbled on two nights ago when he was having trouble sleeping. “I need you to copy this over into a more legible hand, and Brienne can witness when I sign it. Or I’ll get someone more objective, if you prefer.”

Sansa reads it over quickly, and her frown grows darker.

“You named me your heir?” she asks.

“Who else?”

“Jaime, this is…” Sansa breathes out and looks up at him, her brow furrowed and her cheeks red. “The crown, if you die before completing your term. Casterly Rock. Whatever gold still remains to your family. Jaime, this is _everything_ you have. What about your children?”

“My children are dead, Sansa, as you are well aware,” Jaime reminds her with a cutting smile. She frowns at him again. She looks torn between being happy and being angry.

“You know what I meant,” she says.

“There aren’t going to be any more children,” he tells her. He utterly _refuses_ to allow her to break eye contact, because she would only look at Brienne, and he cannot handle that humiliation right now. Just because they don’t ever talk about it, it doesn’t mean that everyone in the room doesn’t know exactly how Jaime feels about Brienne, and exactly how much he would love the chance for children with her one day. Adopted orphans or otherwise. He’s not picky. He’ll raise anything as long as Brienne’s there helping, but he has no interest in any of it if she’s not. “I know the lords like to throw their poor daughters at me, but I’m not going to marry any of them. My…opportunity for that has passed. You’d make as good a daughter as any, Sansa. You are the reason the realm is doing as well as it is. If I’m to die with the work unfinished, you’re the only one I would trust to see the rest of it carried out.”

“Jaime,” Brienne says gently, just over his shoulder. “They aren’t going to succeed.”

Her hand hovers near his shoulder, and then she allows it to lower, touching him for the first time since he kissed her hand to say farewell in the Winterfell courtyard. He tries not to tense up under her touch, because he knows she will misread it. When he looks up to make eye contact with his Hand, Sansa is looking at him with pity.

* * *

She doesn’t say anything about it until later that night, when she knocks on his door and lets herself in, dismissing Podrick and asking him to stand outside while she speaks with the king. Sansa had eventually agreed to be named Jaime’s heir, though she had insisted on a clause that said that any children of Jaime’s would supersede her claim. He assumes her presence is for a quiet celebration until she pours him a goblet of wine and hands it to him with a mulish set to her shoulders that makes him think of her mother.

“Drink,” she says. He drinks, amused by her seriousness. “We’re going to talk about Brienne.”

He groans and puts the goblet down, which she dutifully fills again, this time with a hint of a smile.

“We have so many other things to talk about. Did you send the raven to your sister?”

“You know I did. Don’t be insulting. My duties are attended to, and we have time for this conversation. Brienne is leading a training session, so she isn’t shadowing you for once. I don’t mean to waste this opportunity.”

“No, of course you don’t,” Jaime grumbles. 

“Drink,” she says, and he sighs and drinks.

“What is it exactly that you hope to gain from this?”

“Understanding.”

“What is there to understand?”

“When I was a girl, I fancied myself in love with your son. You know that.”

“I do,” Jaime admits with a wince. Not that he paid much attention to Sansa on the way back to Kings Landing, but she was a courteous little slip of a girl who stared at Joffrey with stars in her eyes.

“Obviously I’ve learned better now, and I know what true love looks like.”

“Ugh. Please don’t make me do this.”

“I’m only saying it because the way you two carry on is humiliating to be in the presence of. She looks at you like a maid from a song.”

“Is she the maid? Or am I the maid?”

“You’re both the maid,” Sansa says. “Mooning over each other. It’s disgusting.”

“She doesn’t,” Jaime laughs. It only hurts a little bit now, after a year. The ache fading, the pain dulling. It’s easier to accept than it was. It feels like penance, really, for all his sins, and in his steadily advancing age, the notion of paying for them doesn’t seem as absurd as it used to. “She doesn’t want…well, me. She doesn’t want me.”

“She does. I’m sure you misunderstood whatever she said. Or perhaps she said it because _she_ misunderstood whatever it was _you_ said. I don’t know the full reason for any of it, because you’re both very good at refusing to talk about important things. But I know the way she looks at you, and I know the way you try not to look at her. What happened in Winterfell?”

“Nothing I’m going to tell a girl I just named as my daughter.”

“Then you’re already a better fake father than any others I’ve known,” Sansa mutters, taking a sip of wine and grimacing. “I’m not asking you for _details_, Jaime. I’m asking you what happened.”

“I left,” Jaime says. “And she cannot forgive it.”

“Forgive it? Or understand it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I remember that morning. Brienne rushed out to volunteer for some inane task that she wasn’t needed for, and you moped around the castle like some bewildered, kicked dog. _Why_?”

He has come to know Sansa’s moods, and he knows when she’s not going to let something go.

“She woke before me that morning, and I wanted to find her and make sure she didn’t...regret. What we had done. I’m not sure if she did. I think she was likely just startled and shy and so she bolted. I would have talked to her when she returned, but I got pulled into a meeting with Daenerys and Tyrion, and I realized that I couldn’t stay. I told her, once I managed to get her alone, and she was very polite when she told me she understood. Very dutiful. She asked me to stay, later, but even that was…I don’t know. I don’t want to say _dispassionate_, but it was almost that. She seemed to know I couldn’t.”

“_Why_ couldn’t you?”

“Daenerys was going to kill my sister. She was going to kill our _child_. Cersei claimed to be pregnant before I left Kings Landing. I know now that she wasn’t. Or perhaps she was, at one point, but she wasn’t when she died.”

“I didn’t know that,” Sansa says quietly. She doesn’t offer him her apologies or regrets, which he likes her all the better for.

“I knew that Cersei would be executed, because I knew she’d never give up. I thought if I went to her, spoke to her, maybe reminded her that the child could live if she surrendered…I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do. Obviously, she didn’t listen to me, and Daenerys tried to burn the city, and Cersei died. I should have just stayed in Winterfell with Brienne. I know that now, but I also know that I would have wondered for the rest of my life if there was something I could have done. I know that my sister was monstrous to you, but she was my twin, and I loved her.”

“Cersei was monstrous to everyone,” Sansa says in a tight, annoyed tone. “You were just too blind to see it.”

“No, I saw it,” Jaime admits. “I just…didn’t try to stop it. Even after she used _wildfire_.” He laughs bitterly. “Sometimes I wonder at that man. How could he have gone back to her after that? It doesn’t feel like me, but then I remember that it _was_, and I grow ashamed again.”

“I think we all feel shame for our past actions.”

“Perhaps that’s true,” Jaime says. “But some of us have more to be ashamed of than others.”

“I won’t enter into some kind of competition with you over who regrets more. You crippled my brother. You automatically win. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own.” She sighs and takes another large gulp of wine. She again reminds him of a child pretending at being grown, but he knows that’s unfair; she’s a more competent Hand than many men twice her age would have been. His vaguely paternal feelings for her are fine, but he cannot allow them to blind him to the reality that she’s a woman who he should be listening to. “Do you know I didn’t even say goodbye to Jon when we left Winterfell the first time? I didn’t even think of it until we were on the road two whole days. I hugged Rickon, and I went and kissed Bran on the cheek even though it made me feel sick to see him lying there, and Robb picked me up in the courtyard and spun me around like he used to when I was little, and even though I was annoyed and embarrassed and afraid your sister would think me childish if she saw me, I still hugged him back. But I never said anything to Jon. And then it was two days later, and I was feeling homesick, and I thought of one time when we were playing at hiding in the godswood. I think Theon called it Hunters and Wolves. He and Jon were the hunters, and the rest of us were wolves. I didn’t usually play with them, but I decided to, that day. I can’t remember _why. _I think I was trying to avoid some lesson I hated. Something with maps and memorization, probably. Arya and I both snuck away. It was one of the only times we both agreed on that, so I wanted to be extra good at whatever we were doing. I wanted to prove that I _could _play with them if I chose.” She laughs a little, obviously irritated at the girl she used to be. “I tried to climb up into the heart tree, because I thought my hair might blend in with the leaves, but the upper branches were too thick, and I couldn’t get a grip on any but the lowest. Jon found me, and I was so embarrassed that I had been caught so quickly, but Jon just held a finger to his lips and lifted me higher into the upper branches. He and Theon found everyone else before Jon pretended at last to find me. I had never had a secret with Jon before, and we both kept laughing and almost giving it away when Robb asked how I possibly got up there all on my own. When I remembered that on the Kingsroad, and I realized I would never see Jon again, I felt so guilty and horrible. And then I forgot again, because _Joffrey_ wanted to talk to me, and I was such a stupid little girl. When my father was dead, I would lie awake every night and imagine Robb coming to save me. Kicking down my door and picking me up from bed and carrying me out with snowflakes still melting in his hair. And he would bring me to my mother, and Arya would already be there, because of course Arya would have gotten away and found her way back to them somehow. I never imagined Jon coming for me. Not once. When I saw him again, I wanted to weep forever for a thousand different reasons, but one of them was regret. I wished I’d said goodbye to him. I wished that I would have been nicer to him. I still do.”

Jaime gives her a moment to let her regrets sit, and then he quietly says, “I’m sorry I sent him away.”

“He’ll be happier there than he would have been here.”

“Even if he misses his family?”

“Even if he misses his family,” Sansa agrees sadly. “And even if we miss him.” She takes another sip of the wine, and then she looks at him sternly again, abandoning the skin of the little girl and becoming his faithful Hand again. “But this isn’t about me and Jon.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It’s about Brienne. And you. And Winterfell.”

“And regrets,” Jaime reminds her, raising a glass. Sansa rolls her eyes.

“You said that she understood. I don’t think she did.”

“What’s not to understand?”

“I think that Brienne saw what she expected to see, and I think she still sees it.”

“What did she expect to see?”

“You just said it.”

“What? When?”

“Ugh,” Sansa sighs. She leans forward and looks at him very intently. “You went back to her. Every time, you went back to your sister. You chose your sister over all else. Over all reason. Every time.”

“She was pregnant!” Jaime says, cold dread seeping into him. “I told Brienne I had to go back and try to save her, for the baby and...”

“And because you loved her.”

“She was my _sister_!”

“She was never just your sister. Maybe that’s how you saw her, in the end. I don’t know. But she was never _just_ your sister. How was Brienne supposed to know that anything had changed? Just because you _kissed _her?”

And, well, he hates to nurture hope in his heart that this could all be a misunderstanding and that it isn’t just that Brienne felt little enough for him that she was able to write him off when he tried to help Cersei because she found it _dishonorable_ or whatever it is he’s been assuming about her reasons for turning him down. But it makes _sense_. It makes sense, and Sansa said it, and in the past year he has come to trust the way she reads people, and he thinks she might be right.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

“I told you,” Sansa says, with a very satisfied smirk.

“Fuck,” Jaime repeats, with more emphasis this time. “It’s been a _year_.”

“I know. You’ve been quite stupid about this, both of you.”

“Shut up,” Jaime says, and she laughs. “How am I supposed to fix this?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re the Hand, aren’t you? You’re supposed to do the real work and I’m supposed to blather along idiotically and take all the credit.”

“It’s not like I have any more experience with this than you do. Just _tell_ her.”

“She said she didn’t want me to say things like that.”

“Things like what?”

“I don’t remember. I said something probably very dramatic and maudlin while trying to be romantic.”

“Easy enough. Don’t be dramatic or maudlin and just tell her the truth. She probably thought you were still mourning Cersei when you said it. That you didn’t know what you were saying. Or maybe she thought that you were trying to get back in her good graces because Cersei was dead and she was still alive.”

“Oh, gods, do you think?” Jaime groans. “That would be awful.”

“It would be,” Sansa agrees with a small smile. “It is. It’s unbearable to watch. This pathetic _pining. _It always sounds lovely in the stories, but the reality is rather less inspiring.”

“Perhaps I did us all a service, then, sending Jon to the wall.”

Sansa gifts him with a very unimpressed look that turns into a bit of a smile.

“So you’re only an idiot about your own emotions, then,” she says, her chin lifted regally, her tone like ice. At least if some assassin gets the best of him, he chose his replacement well.

“Maybe you’re just very obvious,” he replies.

“I’m not,” she says, with the confidence of the young. “You’re a better man than you were, and I’m proud to be your Hand, but I will never respect you until you manage to make this right.”

Jaime grimaces and takes another long swallow of the goblet in front of him.

* * *

Jaime has never been good at talking about things. He can banter fine, and say sarcastic things that shut up people who were already a bit afraid of him, but important things? He used to speak all his love while he was inside Cersei, like the filter between his brain and mouth was removed as long as his cock was busy. She would quiet him with hungry kisses and urgent shushes, but he would speak on and on until he was finished. Outside lovemaking, he has always been awkward and stilted. His family were always so disposed to wryness and sarcasm. Sincerity has always been difficult.

Little gifts never worked very well with Cersei, because she would be irritated by the small things and anything bigger would spark her paranoia.

“Did anyone see you buying it?” she demanded once of a pretty golden ring with a green stone that had reminded him of her eyes.

“Why does it matter?” he asked. “You’re my twin. I can buy you gifts. No one will question it.”

But she had ordered it taken away, and so he had kept it hidden until he lost it somewhere.

With Brienne, it’s different. He’s not sure she’ll believe sincerity. Not right away. Not when she’s still so separated from him. But gifts? He doesn’t have to hide anything. He can give her anything he wants. He knows she likes big gestures, but frankly he’s running out of those, so smaller gestures will have to do. He tries to find times when Sansa isn’t around, because he knows he’ll just be embarrassed if she’s looking at him with those Catelyn Tully eyes and that devastating Ned Stark judgement.

He gives Brienne little gifts, little tokens of appreciation that he tries not to attach any overwhelming emotions to. A new blanket that he thinks she would like. An embroidered handkerchief. A good pair of boots. Things that would be appropriate for a king to give his Lord Commander as small _thank you_s for sterling service. But it isn’t just material things. He knows he needs to show his appreciation in other ways, too. Show her that he values her.

When the new prince of Dorne requests a private audience to discuss food production, Jaime brings Brienne along and asks for her opinion on several matters, aware but uncaring of the way the prince watches and takes stock of the fact that King Jaime clearly respects the opinion of his Lord Commander. Afterward, Jaime urges Brienne to eat some of the fruits that the prince brought as a gift, and when he sees how much she likes the taste of oranges, he gives her the lot and pretends he doesn’t care for them.

At the smallcouncil meetings, he scolds Bronn for interrupting her when she’s speaking, even though he knows Bronn will irritate him something fierce later, and he sends her with Davos when Davos needs a steady head to help him corral a couple of rowdy shipcaptains, and he tells everyone who will listen that Brienne is his most trusted advisor, and his friend, and should be listened to. He invites her to meetings with Addam about the Goldcloaks, and they argue over food and wine as Sansa scribbles out figures and Bronn tries to find more gold. Brienne warms slowly, but she warms. She laughs more at his jokes, and she starts to _publicly_ scoff and roll her eyes at him when he says something foolish, instead of just allowing it when they’re among friends. He catches her smiling at him sometimes, in that quiet way she does that barely looks like a smile at all.

* * *

The night the assassins come seems normal enough. They’ve just finished with an annoyingly elaborate feast that Sansa insisted he had to throw for Yara Greyjoy. She was a tricky one to gain support from, but they’d managed it with enough gold and men to throw at Euron until the lecherous idiot was defeated and the Iron Islands given over to her. She seems to like Sansa, besides, with all the stories Sansa tells about Theon growing up, and she eyes Brienne with an open lust that makes Brienne flush and makes Jaime equal parts territorial and reluctantly pleased that someone else has the same reaction to Brienne as him. Just like with that big flameheaded Free Folk oaf.

He tries to tease Brienne into having a goblet of wine, but she’s very dutiful as always, standing just over his shoulder, and she rejects his every attempt. Even when he sighs and overperforms his dejection, she only laughs at him, though at least it sounds like _fond_ laughter.

Sansa is beautiful but severe and quietly smug whenever he and Brienne exchange so much as a single word. More than one upjumped lord attempts to engage her in conversation or ask her to dance, but she deflects them all diplomatically. A few of the future council members have apparently heard whispers about the growing threat of the Targaryen girl, and he endures many quiet, polite inquiries on whether they are planning on _taking care of it_, which always makes him bristle. Sansa is good at defusing the tension and smiling very coldly and politely and reminding the questioners that the king's mercy was a final statement, and he won’t change his mind.

She’s still a better Hand than he deserves, probably. She’s a better friend, too. A better heir. If Brienne’s impossible physical proximity and emotional distance are his penance, then Sansa must be a reward for something good.

When the feast is finally at its end, he dismisses everyone with an attempt at kingliness that makes Bronn boo him openly from the low table where Jaime insisted he be sat, and Jaime flashes him a rude gesture that only Bronn and Brienne seem to have seen. Possibly Pod, judging by how red his face turns, as if he is trying not to laugh.

Sansa stops him in the hall as he and Brienne are leaving.

“I’ve had word from Bran,” she says. “A raven. He says to be wary. Arya will be arriving soon, he says, but the danger is close.”

“Please write back to your brother and inform him that I find his cryptic messages very irritating,”

“We should get you to your chambers,” Brienne says. Her hand is wrapped firmly around Oathkeeper, and her other comes up to grip his arm, as if she means to drag him all the way back to his rooms like an unruly child. He laughs a little.

“See? Tell your brother he’s made my Lord Commander paranoid,” he shouts as Brienne pulls him bodily after her.

* * *

When they get back to his room, Jaime is surprised to find Pod and the fierce Free Folk woman, Lenna, searching through his chambers. They seem surprised to see him back so early.

“Do people check my rooms every night?” he asks. He’s a bit annoyed he didn’t know about it, and Brienne’s face flushes a bit red.

“I take my position seriously,” she says. She looks at him, and for a moment, her expression is open. Not the blank, shuttered madness it was after he left her in Winterfell, and not the tentative affection of lately. It’s the way she gazed at him at Riverrun. The way she looked at him in the bath in Harrenhall. It’s so very Brienne, and his stomach clenches and his breath stutters. “Someone has to keep you alive.”

He’s glad that she turns to dismiss the others, because he would have surely choked out something ridiculous and embarrassing otherwise. He watches her stride across the room and check the balcony and behind the curtains again, and he feels a growing fondness. She kneels down and checks under his bed, and he chuckles a little, helplessly besotted with her big, foolish self.

“What?” she snaps.

“Nothing. You’re very thorough,” he says.

“I’m keeping you _safe_,” she reminds him, her jaw tightening in that mulish expression he somehow used to hate.

“Yes, and you do a very fine job,” Jaime says. He’s sincere, smiling at her, but he sees the way her eyes go to his golden hand, and he frowns. “I mean it,” he says. “This? This wasn’t your fault.”

Her hand tightens on Oathkeeper the way it always does when she’s suppressing something, and she ducks her head, starting to move past him. He doesn’t want her to leave.

“Wait,” he says, and he knows that his voice is high and needy and pathetic. “Brienne, please. I need you to know…”

“You’re drunk.”

“What? No I’m not.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“I’m a Lannister. A few glasses of wine is nothing. I…”

“Jaime,” Brienne sighs, plainly irritated. “What good can come of it?”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“You’re going to say something foolish and somehow charming, half apology and half excuse, and it will work. But what good will come of it?”

Jaime feels stung. He thinks perhaps in a few moments he’ll feel _injured_, like when a blow lands but doesn’t hurt right away.

“What _good_?” he asks.

“Goodnight, Jaime,” she says, turning to go.

“I love you,” he says. She freezes, and she turns to look at him, and her expression may as well be carved from stone.

“You don’t,” she says, as if it is the end of the conversation, and she leaves.

Jaime stands there for a full minute afterward, staring at the door, speechless and affronted, his annoyance mounting. He spreads his arms incredulously to the empty room, his face scrunching with disbelief. She’s probably on guard right outside. He could wrench open his door and go after her, demand that she listen to him. But what good would _that_ do? It would only annoy her, and he can say beastly cruel things when he’s angry, he knows.

No, best wait until the morning, when he can argue his case with a clearer head. Not that he thinks he’ll be much less annoyed; he can’t believe she just said _you don’t _like that. What does she know about it, anyway?

* * *

He’s awoken by the song of sword on sword somewhere close, within the palace. He thinks it’s a dream at first. He had been dreaming of Brienne fighting him on that bridge, only he had already lost a hand, and she was trying to kill him while his stump pumped blood steadily into the dirt and he grew weaker with every heartbeat. The swords had screamed as they came together, and to hear them when waking feels like a fading nightmare instead of reality for a few moments.

He struggles to sit up, tangled in his blankets, and in the darkness of his room he sees the shape of a person, no more than a shadow in this light, moving towards him. He yells for his guards and rolls away to the far side of the bed, where he keeps a knife on the table beside it. He tries to grab it with his right hand, and his stump sends it skittering to the floor. He follows it, his knees hitting the stone with a jarring force that will have him hobbling later, if he manages to survive this. He hears the sound of a blade being drawn from a scabbard.

He reaches blindly, and he finds the knife under the bed, and he grabs it and turns just in time for the blade to come down at him. He deflects the blow with the knife and surges to his feet. He is dressed only in his smallclothes, and he feels naked and horribly small. Is this still a nightmare? It feels like one. The assassin will turn out to have Cersei’s face, probably.

The assassin wields a small blade. They shift in the shadows of the darkened room. Outside, he hears shouting. _Brienne_, he remembers. She was on guard._ Oh, gods, not Brienne. I should have sent her north, sent her away…_

He wakes as he fights. Perhaps he will feel pride for it later, but in truth it’s mostly instinct. He fights dirty, and he manages to push them across the room to where Widows Wail is propped against the wall, and then he feels it, perfect in his hand. His blood rushes with battlesong, and he laughs in the face of this would-be assassin. If this bastard killed Brienne to get to him, there is nothing else to lose. They have made themselves a powerful enemy.

But rage and bloodlust can only do so much. He is fighting a talented assassin with his off hand, and he is tired and not as young as he once was. He fights them back, drives them away, and he realizes that they are toying with him. They could end this at any point.

They stab him once, in the side, a painful punch that makes him stumble away and shove his sword at their face. They deflect it with only a minor cut to their neck, and he knows already that he’s lost this fight. They swipe at his chest, cutting it deeply, and he lurches back, puts distance between them. It is exactly what the assassin wanted.

They kick him in the chest, and he crashes into a table, the delicate wood splintering under his weight. He cries out, and the assassin stands over him, just as Brienne had in his dream, with her glorious fury beautiful even as she sneered at him in disgust. This assassin does not bother to do the same. They stare at him. He cannot see their face, but he imagines they are amused. He’s sure his reputation had convinced them that this would be a more difficult fight.

Then there are two shadows above him. This second one melts silently from the open door of the balcony. A small, lithe movement as a silent sword is drawn. Jaime does not fully look at them, because he finds it in his idiot heart to hope.

There is a sound like a hole puncturing a half-full waterskin, and then the assassin has grown a steel appendage, right out the front of their chest. They turn, and the second shadow flashes with light, and then there is blood spraying on Jaime from above as the second shadow cuts the assassin’s throat.

“You’re a shit fighter with your left hand,” says Arya Stark, before the body of the assassin has even fallen. When it does, it falls gracelessly on Jaime’s legs, sending pain shivering up his spine, where the pieces of table dig into his back. Arya laughs at him when he makes some pathetic noise that’s halfway between hurt and offense.

“Were you just standing out there watching me?”

“I wanted to see how long you could last.” When he glares speechlessly, she scoffs. “What? I’m not your bloody Kingsguard. I didn’t swear any pretty oaths. You _could_ thank me for saving your life.”

“Maybe I’ll find it in my heart if you help me move this.”

Arya chuckles and helps him slide the assassin’s body off his legs. Jaime unmasks them, but it’s no one he recognizes, which is a bit disappointing.

“Who is it?” he asks.

“Dunno. Some Faceless Man. Daenerys had her pretty sellsword hire a few of them. She felt sorry for it, but she’s got _advisors _now, and they all think you should be dead. I asked your brother about it, but he’s not with her anymore, and he had no idea what I was talking about.”

“Is Tyrion all right?”

“Fine. Hates you a bit for exiling him but he said he’d have done the same to you. He’ll get over it once you give him the pardon everyone knows you will. He’s going to go work things out with Daenerys, he said, to try and get her to leave you alone. Maybe he’ll get lucky. You should probably follow me. Your fancy warriors apparently aren’t doing their jobs.”

“Shit. Brienne,” he breathes, and he staggers to his feet. Arya watches him with obvious annoyance as he stumbles around the room and lurches into breeches and a tunic, wincing at his pull of his injuries. They’re bleeding, but there’s no time to stop it. When he’s done, she’s waiting by the door, a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture.

“Come on,” she says.

He takes Widows Wail and follows her. She moves silently, even the creaking door opening without noise for once as she slides it open. He tries to emulate her as best as he can, but he’s tired and injured and he knows he isn’t entirely successful. Beside the door, there’s a dead Kingsguard. The lad from the Westerlands. Jaime feels monstrous for the flood of relief he feels, because he doesn’t see Brienne anywhere.

There are sounds of fighting in the keep, but every noise echoes strangely here, and even after having spent most of his life in these halls, he isn’t sure where they’re coming from. The clash of steel on steel, the cries and grunts and curses of the fighters. He feels helpless and lost as he follows Arya. He feels tired. He feels old.

_Please let her be alive._

Arya breaks into a sprint suddenly, and she meets with another assassin at a juncture of the hallway, spinning into a complicated dance, each of them wielding what seems like a thousand different blades, knives flashing out of boots and belts and sleeves to meet and clash and then fly down the hall. Jaime follows, and he distracts the assassin long enough for Arya to stab them half a dozen times.

“You should stay back, your grace,” she says, deeply sarcastic, as she gathers up her weapons.

“Fuck off,” he says.

“This way,” she replies.

They meet some sellswords on the way. They’re far easier to fight than the faceless men, and Jaime takes down enough of them to start feeling slightly less pathetic. They find Bronn gleefully carving his way through a whole group of them, and he sends Jaime a cocky salute across the room before diving back in. Arya leads him up another set of stairs, and he realizes that they’re headed to Sansa’s room.

The final faceless man they run into nearly gets the best of Arya, but they take the wind out of Jaime’s sails completely. He was already flagging, his tunic a blood-soaked mess, and the mighty punch to the jaw the assassin deals him sends his head ringing and his stupid body reeling. He collapses against the wall as Arya finishes them off, and then she wanders over and looks down at him with a mingling of concern and disdain.

“Go to Sansa,” he says. “Brienne must be with her.”

“What about you?” she asks.

“You’re not my bloody Kingsguard,” he reminds her, and she cracks half a smile.

“They’ll both have my head if I let you die out here in the hallway,” she points out.

“Better me than them,” he says. “Go. It’s an order.”

“I don’t take orders from stupid old lions,” she says, but with another look around to make sure no one is coming, she goes.

* * *

Jaime drifts. He’s in the throne room, and he’s watching Ned Stark cook inside his armor while Robb strangles himself struggling.

_No_, he thinks,_ this didn’t happen_. But Aerys laughs, and Jaime staggers forward to thrust his sword through the king’s back. But he isn’t holding a sword. His hand is gone. Both hands are gone.

He’s thrashing in the river, and Brienne is there, and she’s pulling him up and dragging him into the woods, shushing him again and again as he struggles, and she holds him in one arm as if he weighs nothing, as if he _is_ nothing, and she’s dripping wet, her hair plastered to her forehead.

“Your grace,” she sneers, the same way she used to sneer _Kingslayer_.

He’s in Winterfell. No one else is with him. Ash is in the air, on his tongue. He hears the dragons screeching outside, and one shakes the castle as it flies overhead. He has to find her room. He has to tell her everything. But each hallway is collapsed and destroyed, and he remembers. The dead. The dead are here, and Brienne is in danger.

* * *

“Ser!”

He slams back into awareness as Pod grabs his shoulder.

“I mean, your grace,” Pod remembers, and Jaime grumbles out a protest and tries to swat the boy away, but Pod holds on resolutely.

“Your grace, it’s me, Podrick,” he says, and Jaime wants to laugh. His mouth feels very dry and sticky, and he realizes he is bleeding still.

“Yes, I know who you are, Podrick,” he manages. “Where’s Brienne?”

“I don’t know. I was looking for her. I thought she’d be with you.”

“If only,” Jaime sighs.

“Your grace?”

“Get me to Sam, would you? He’s probably hiding in his quarters.”

“Of course, Ser. My Lord. Your grace,” Podrick says, and Jaime sighs again.

* * *

Sam is indeed in his quarters with Gilly and their two children, who are all panicked and loud and asking a million questions. Sam is pale and plainly terrified, but he chuckles a lot and tries to pretend everything’s fine, even as he’s going green trying not to be sick from the amount of blood Jaime’s losing. Jaime’s thinking wistfully of Maester Pycelle, who was a fool and a bumbling annoyance but was at least quiet if you told him to shut up firmly enough, and Pod’s pacing impatiently but refuses to leave his side to find Brienne, and finally Jaime’s consciousness has the good sense to fuck off and let him sleep again.

* * *

It really is convenient to pass out in the middle of a big event and then wake up only when the mess has all been taken care of. Jaime resolves to do it more often.

He’s in his own quarters when he wakes, drowsy and irritated by the sun in his eyes, and everything smells of lemons, so he knows the body is gone from his room and the floor has been scrubbed thoroughly.

When he opens his eyes, he sees Sansa pacing by the foot of his bed. His eyes go hopefully first to one side and then the other, hoping expecting to see Brienne, but she isn’t there. His heart sinks first, and then his stomach.

_If she loved me, she would be by my bedside, wouldn’t she? _And then _oh, gods, what if she’s dead?_

“Sansa,” he rasps, trying to sit up, and she darts to him quickly, her expression drawing down in annoyance.

“Stop it,” she snaps, even as she’s helping him, propping pillows up behind him and touching him unthinkingly to make sure he’s all right. “How do you feel?”

“Awful,” he admits. “Brienne. Is Brienne?”

“Brienne is fine,” Sansa says incredulously. “Unlike _you_, Jaime.”

“Oh gods,” Jaime gasps, holding up his stump, pretending to notice it for the first time. “They cut off my hand. Whatever shall I do?”

“You nearly _died_.”

“Minor wounds at worst, Lady Stark. I’m fine.”

She rolls her eyes at him, her glare withering, and he’s reminded again of her mother, and it makes him want to laugh.

“You’re not fine. You were _lucky_. On a number of different levels. Daenerys sent three faceless men here to kill you.”

“An expensive endeavor for an exile.”

“Yes, well, I’ve been told by my spies that she doesn’t have the gold for another attempt, so you’ve been granted a reprieve for now. Until she finds some other way to raise an army or at least enough gold to try again.”

“Where is she?”

“Still in Meereen. You’d do well to send a faceless man of your own.”

“I know, but I won’t.”

Sansa smiles at him gently.

“I know,” she replies.

“Your sister said that Tyrion is going to try and reason with her. Maybe we should send her a message of our own. Let her know that we handled her assassins and will be willing to forget all about it if she’s willing to try and negotiate for peace.”

“A noble aim,” Sansa snorts. “I don’t know if it will be possible, but stranger things have happened. And she has a soft spot for Tyrion, still.” She sighs and sits on the edge of his bed, frowning down at him. “Do you really mean to give up the crown when the five years are done?”

“I’ve been counting down the days,” Jaime admits, a joke that isn’t really a joke.

“People have fought and died for the chance to rule Westeros.”

“Yes, and how has that turned out for them?”

“But you’re a good king, Jaime.”

“Maybe. I don’t think I’m making a total mess of it, but our last rulers haven’t inspired much confidence, so it’s hard to judge if I’m truly fine or just bolstered by comparison.”

“Trust your Hand,” Sansa says. “You’re a good king.”

She says it so sincerely, refusing to allow him to back away. He sighs, and he nods, grateful for the compliment.

“The throne, the crown, they corrupt people. Maybe I’ve found the secret and have surrounded myself with people I’m too frightened to disappoint. I don’t know. But I don’t want to find out. They say Aerys was a good king once. And there was a time when I thought Robert Baratheon might be one, too. And Cersei…I’m sure my sister didn’t _mean_ to be the queen she turned out to be. They all start out with intentions that, well, maybe aren’t _good_, but certainly aren’t as bad as they end. I won’t make that mistake. The realms have bled enough. It’s time to change things. And why not now? The major houses are all but wiped out. The minor houses too. I don’t think there’s ever been a time when the ruling class has been so weak. I don’t think another chance like this will arrive. And there’s got to be a reason your brother chose me.”

“If we try to figure out what that is, we’ll drive ourselves mad,” Sansa says with a small smile. “But…you’re right.”

“You’ll make a good queen,” he tells her. “You’d probably make a good queen of Westeros, too, if those faceless men had done their jobs. But it’s too big a task for anyone, I think. The north will have their independence, with you at their head, and the south can try something a little different. I don’t think it’s so bad a plan.”

“Nor do I. But it’s not making you a lot of friends.”

“My best acts usually don’t,” he points out, and Sansa smiles.

“I’ll tell Brienne you’re awake.” She grins a little as she stands. “She was quite distraught for you.”

“She’s my Lord Commander, and you know how dutiful Brienne is. She likely feared she’d failed in her most sacred duty.”

Sansa rolls her eyes.

“You’re too old to be begging for assurance like this, Jaime. It would be embarrassing even if you weren’t king. I’ve told you before that Brienne loves you.”

“She thinks I don’t love _her_.”

“Yes, she told me that. She was very upset when she thought you would die and a denial of your feelings was the last thing she said to you.”

“I hope you laughed in her face the way you always laugh in mine.”

“I did, actually,” Sansa says, pleased. “So did Arya. And Podrick, even. Brienne was quite embarrassed, but at least she knows.”

Jaime’s heart does this annoying, hopeful little thudding thing in his chest, and Sansa smiles again and rolls her eyes again and flounces out of the room before he can say something very sappy and paternal about how much he values her.

* * *

Brienne comes into his room not long after, looking like she’s ready to face the gallows. Jaime laughs at her immediately, and he’s glad he does, because she glares at him. Stubborn and irritated and defensive and so _perfectly _Brienne.

“Jaime,” she says, stiffly, from between clenched teeth.

“I’m glad to see you’re all right.”

“You nearly died.”

“I nearly did! But I held my own for quite a while with a faceless man. You should be proud.”

“_Proud_? Two of our men died in the attack. I should have been on guard outside your room, but I...” She sighs, her nostrils flaring, and he watches her with a vague discomfort. “I asked Flynn to take my watch. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Call me a bastard for it if you’d like, but if making you angry enough to switch your watch was what kept you alive, I’ll have to infuriate you more often.” She glares at him. “I’m sorry for Flynn. I am. I’m sorry for all the Goldcloaks and soldiers who died when the sellswords made their attempt, and whoever was killed so that the assassins could get in. But you’re alive, and that is the most important thing to me.”

He does not look away from her gaze, because he needs her to see that he is entirely sincere.

“You’re the king,” she says, very slowly, like he’s forgotten.

“I am. So?”

“Jaime,” she says sternly.

“I don’t care that I’m the king. I don’t care that you’re my bloody Lord Commander . I didn’t care when I was a bloody Kingsguard, either. I care about you. I love _you_. You very rudely tried to tell me I didn’t earlier, but as foolish as I’ve been about my affections in the past, perhaps you’ll allow that I know myself better than you do.” She continues to glare, torn between remaining Dutiful Lord Commander Brienne and Irritated with Jaime Brienne. “I loved you when I saw you at Riverrun. I loved you when I saw you at the Dragonpit. I followed you to Winterfell, and I loved you there. I wanted to marry you.”

“Jaime,” she says, startled.

“That night, after the battle…”

“Jaime.” Now it’s warning, but he forges ahead.

“I was drunk and bold enough to reach for what I wanted, but I wanted so much more than that. I kept thinking ‘you can’t dishonor her’ and ‘you have to show her’ and so I gave you what I could and determined I would suggest a marriage as soon as I was sober enough to say the words without embarrassing myself. Except then I fucked it all up, because I left. I left, and I thought you understood why, but apparently you didn’t. I didn’t return to save Cersei as a lover. I returned to save her as my sister, as my twin, as the woman I loved for most of my life. She wasn’t the same girl she was, and I wasn’t the same man. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t love her, but it meant I couldn’t love her in the same way I used to. My heart has been yours for _years_. Even if you don’t feel the same, I at least need you to understand that, because it has been driving me mad, knowing that you think I left because I wanted to, and not because I thought it was something that I had to do.”

“And if I do?” Brienne asks. “Feel the same way?” She’s holding Oathkeeper tight, looking like a vision in white, the sun doing wonderful things to her hair and her eyes, and he only realizes what she’s said after a too-long moment of just…staring.

“If you do,” he says, his voice hoarse like he’s injured himself from keeping all this inside of him for years without letting it out properly until now. “If you do, I would say that it would be easier to protect your king if you were in bed beside him every night, wouldn’t it?”

She stares at him. He has time to wonder if he has fucked everything up again. And then she smiles. Slow, disbelieving, frankly incredulous. And then she laughs, and his heart thuds an obnoxious, telling beat in his chest.

“You’re ridiculous,” she says, and there is so much fondness in her tone that he feels his fears literally melt away as she moves closer to the bed.

“Am I wrong?” he asks. She sits on the edge of the bed, bending one long leg beneath her, and she pulls back the covers so she can examine the bandages at his side. Her fingers dance over them, not quite touching his skin, and he could die happily like this.

“No,” she admits quietly. “I thought…”

“I know.”

“You know what I thought?”

“You thought that I left because I wanted to be with Cersei. You probably thought it was easy for me to leave you. You probably don’t know it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”

“I didn’t know…” she starts, and she trails off, but with that sad kind of finality that means she won’t be continuing the thought.

“I know you didn’t,” he says. “And I know I bear at least some of the blame for that. I should have made my intentions more clear that night. All I could think was that I wanted to taste you and that I shouldn’t fuck you until we were wed, but I should have forced myself to remember at least a few other things.”

“I shouldn’t have run, in the morning,” Brienne says quietly.

“Why did you?”

He knows, though. After a few initial pangs of insecurity, he had known all along. He knew Brienne too well for misunderstanding her motives in hiding from him the next morning. He lets her struggle through figuring out how to put it, because he knows she needs to say it.

Eventually, she says, “I thought you would think it a mistake, when you woke. I thought I would leave and spare us both.”

“I looked for you that morning,” he admits.

“Sansa told me. I don’t think I believed her at the time. I think I thought she was being nice.”

“I looked for you. And I wanted to kiss you again. And I wanted to taste you again. And I wanted to marry you. I still do.”

“You’re the king,” she points out. “And I’m Lord Commander of your Kingsguard.”

“Yes, and none of your vows say you can’t also be my queen,” he says. He feels embarrassed suddenly to have said it. “It isn’t...we didn’t write the vows specifically for _that_. but I wanted them to be vows you would be proud to swear, and I wanted…well, I hoped.”

Brienne’s expression softens as she looks at him. There is something that is almost pity in her expression, but it isn’t pity. It’s empathy, emotion, fondness. She bites her lip, and she touches his bandages absently, looking down at them so she doesn’t have to look at him. He feels like he might be holding his breath.

“I don’t know if I had it in me to hope,” she admits. “But I did dream.”

He grins, and he covers her hand with his own. It hurts a bit, so close to his injury, but he could not care less about the pain. She’s looking at him again, and she turns her hand over to wrap her fingers around his, and he loves her so much.

“I want you to be the last queen of Westeros,” he breathes out, and she laughs at him, her whole face lighting up. He sits up, pained again and still ignoring it, and he kisses her. She grasps his face with both hands, and she kisses him back. But she pulls back quickly.

“It’s a bit _bold_ to assume that your changes will remain in place after you’re gone. You’ll probably hand the crown over and they’ll play at the council thing for a bit before fighting over who gets to be _head_ councillor, and then it’ll be back to a kingship before you know it.”

“Your king has been _gravely_ injured, and you’re mocking his very clever ideas about government on his deathbed?” Jaime asks, and she laughs at him again, gently pushing him back against the pillows, careful not to touch his injury.

“My _king_ needs someone to keep his ego in check,” Brienne says. Her voice is low and hoarse, and Jaime feels quite satisfied with how all of this is turning out, except for the part where he got stabbed.

“Sounds like you’re volunteering for the position,” he says, and she leans forward the last few inches and claims his lips with hers, and it is everything he remembers from that night, except clear and sober and new. Her hands are restless on him, touching his stomach, his chest, holding his arms against the pillow to keep him from sitting up.

“You need to rest,” she says when she reluctantly stops kissing him. “You’re injured.”

“And how will you ever deal with this clash of duties?” he asks, fondly mocking. “Keep your king safe from harming himself? Or finally give in to all these years of repressed longing and ravage him the way you know he wants?”

“Repressed longing?” she asks, unimpressed. He sits up before she can stop him, and he pulls her into a kiss again.

“What else would you call it?” he asks when he finally pulls back, and he laughs as she pushes him back against the pillow more firmly.

“Am I going to have to tie you to this bed?” she asks, irritated and innocent. Her low voice and the very idea go straight to his cock, and then he laughs hard enough to strain his stitches when she is earnestly taken aback and baffled by his breathless answer of “would you?”

* * *

Brienne stands over his shoulder as he signs his final act as king with a flourish. He doesn’t have to look at her to know that she’s rolling her eyes. The last queen of the seven kingdoms – or, well, six kingdoms now – has learned a lot from him over the years, but her practiced perfection of the eyeroll was learned from Sansa, he has no doubt. His Hand is waiting outside to be let in, and Jaime feels a giddy gladness to be done with all of this.

Five years are done. Later, there will be a very public ceremony where he will take off the crown and have it melted down. That horrible throne, too. He’s very excited about that part. He hates the fucking thing. The council has been named and chosen, and they only wait to take his place. Jaime has come to loathe ceremony in the five years he has been king, but he’s looking forward to this one. No one believed him when he said he would end his reign at five years, and he does love proving them wrong.

His signature dries on the two pages in front of him, and he stamps them with his official seal, and then the thing is done. Brienne bends down to kiss him on the cheek.

“You’re a good king,” she tells him. She tells him that a lot. He quite likes it.

“And you’re a better queen. I should have tried to marry you _years_ ago.”

“I probably would have said no,” she teases, though he knows she wouldn’t have. The years have done away with his doubts, and though he knows that she still has flashes of insecurity that make her wonder, he also knows that she trusts him enough to believe him when he says that he loves her, and he knows that she will never run from him again.

“Podrick, could you let her in, please?” he asks.

Sansa enters, dressed in a beautiful gray gown with white and red designs. She’s been spending all morning with their guests: Tyrion, mostly, though he knows she’s been sticking close to Daenerys and her consort as well. It’s been a few years since that whole faceless man fiasco, and Jaime and Daenerys have managed to find common ground in working together to “break the wheel” and change the parts of the world they hate the most, but there will never be any affection between them, and there will be even less affection between Daenerys and Sansa. No one has forgotten the Battle of Kings Landing, and the way Daenerys nearly killed them all, but Jaime knows better than anyone that a person’s worst acts don’t always define them.

Well, maybe they define her a _little. _But in the interest of keeping himself and his family and the members of his new council alive, resentful friends are better than bitter enemies.

Sansa’s the one who made it happen, really. She’s the one who got Tyrion on their side, and she’s the one who convinced Daenerys to let the past die and let Westeros remain unconquered. Jaime can only really take the credit for knowing she’d make a good Hand in the first place. He still remembers her small, hopeful voice when he asked her. Relieved to be valued for something other than her claim to her north and her beauty. He has done many things he will never forgive himself for, but this is one thing he knows he did right.

“Lady Sansa,” he says, picking up the first page and handing it to her. “Or should I say: your grace.”

Sansa bites her lip to try and contain her smile, but Jaime basks in the purity of the joy in her expression. She reads the proclamation severing the north from the rest of the six kingdoms and naming her as its queen, and she breathes out a shaking sigh of relief.

“I can’t believe you actually did it,” she says, teasing, trying unsuccessfully to hide her emotions.

“Please don’t make me say the thing about Lannisters and debts.”

“I would never. Thank you, Jaime.”

“It was my second to last act as king,” he says, rather smug already. He holds out the second page. She takes it gently, her eyes already glittering. “A full pardon,” he says. “For Jon Snow. I figure I’ll leave the legitimizing to you. I wasn’t sure if he’d want to be Stark or Targaryen.”

“Stark,” she says, quietly, smiling down at the pardon. “Thank you.”

“I should have done it years ago,” Jaime admits. “Certainly should have done it before pardoning my brother, but…”

“The people needed a punishment,” Sansa says, reciting the same words she has been saying for the past five years. “So we gave them one. Five years is long enough. Thank you.”

“He got a little lost along the way, but he still saved us. It’s what he’s owed. And you, as well.”

Sansa smiles at him, and fatherly feelings crowd in on him and make him feel foolish and hopeful for the future and regretful for the past, all at once.

“I was right, you know,” she says as she stands to bring his last acts to the council. “You _were_ a good king. Westeros is a better place because you were in charge of it.”

He laughs, and Brienne chuckles with him.

“His ego doesn’t need any help. Especially not today,” she says, but she brushes her fingers gently through his hair to take away any sting that might be in her words. “It’s been non-stop. Everyone telling him how well they loved him as king.”

“Trying to curry my favor,” he says. “They don’t think I’m really leaving. They won’t think I’m leaving until three weeks after I’ve gone.”

“Where will you go?” Sansa asks. She clutches the pages to her chest, and Jaime thinks that five years have not done so much to age her. She is a woman grown, yes, but she is a woman grown who had her childhood stolen from her, and in some ways she is still that child.

“To Tarth,” Jaime says. “For a visit. Then perhaps we’ll visit you in Winterfell.”

“Perhaps you might be persuaded to stay longer,” Sansa says. Hesitant and careful, but he can see the way hope glitters behind her eyes. “I find myself a queen without a Lord Commander for my Queensguard.” Her eyes flicker to Brienne, and she smiles as she turns her eyes to Jaime. “And I'm short a Hand. You appear to have a spare one.”

Jaime laughs, delighted, and he can hear a soft chuckle from his wife behind him.

“We may be able to think of a few qualified people,” she says. Sansa smiles, her lips just barely twitching upwards, and she reaches her hand across the table to squeeze Jaime’s, just for a moment. His left hand. _His _hand.

“Good,” she says. “It has been an honor to serve as your Hand, your grace.”

“Jaime,” he reminds her, and her return smile is very young and full of hope, and he can see her in another five years, in ten, queenly and dignified and motherly and kind, and he will be there beside her as she has been beside him, with Brienne always with them, the three of them exactly as it should be.

And Jon, he supposes. If it’ll make her happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and then daenerys and daario lived happily ever after, conquering all the slave cities over and over again. and jon and brienne very patiently endured jaime's non-stop dad jokes and Sansa's reluctant appreciation for them.


End file.
